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- #13
Overcoming
Confident
Thank you. I hear what you're saying. A lot of why I have struggled to simply say it is not wanting to make her feel responsible. (I know that she is not.) I am virtually no contact with my mother who has BPD. I don't think that repairable and it wouldn't fix what has happened anyway. Scaling back the intensity will be important. I feel like my awkward "hinting around," has only come out more odd and off-putting. Then again, that could all be my anxiety and maybe I'm not saying/communicating anything at all (facepalm)Completely with you here. I too struggled with a very unpredictable mum and father and I long for experienced, reasonable comments from people who have experience. I hanged out at friend’s houses a lot when a teenager as well and was trying to get crumbs of their advice to their children. I also found that generally old people seem more tolerant to behavioural shortcomings or clumsiness because they can see a broader picture. Everyone copes as they can.
Depending on the type of person, you might want to open up or not. I struggled a lot to tell my friends how much I loved them, and that always has lead to a form of distancing on their behalf. The friendship would typically escalate very fast and then stay stuck on a certain level of emotional involvement. I then convinced myself that they detested me or something, truth was that I was keeping them at an arm’s length and they progressively lost interest in the connection or simply had other things to do than waiting for me to get out of the bushes and forgot.
With you with the BPD issue, it is a very, very hard disorder to deal with. I hope both you and your mum are okay.
For your older friend, simply saying small little things that show how you value her will probably do it. I have scared a few people before by coming up with near-declarations of love, but almost of all of them responded very positively. I have more regrets for the people I never said anything.
Another thing. Some people, especially older ones, aren’t from the messaging culture and really don’t tend to answer messages unless they have a question in it. Some ways of wording things as too direct or too indirect actually make it difficult to answer anything. I suffer greatly of presenting things as if it was already resolved in some way and it leaves people confused as what to do about it or wait for you to actually be in an interaction and not something that has to do with yourself. That last part you look like you have already sorted, so all you have to do is to find the right words to express your feelings. Don’t be afraid to be affectionate in your expressions. There is nothing wrong in saying what you feel.
Even if it comes across as a bit clumsy, it’s okay. And you can have a discussion about it. The only thing I would be attentive to is to defuse the intensity as you don’t want anyone to feel responsible for your feelings.